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November 21, 2024
 

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James Hadfield
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 21, 2013
Dustin Wong's loops reach an 'Ecstatic' finale
Using just his six-string and a set of effect pedals, Tokyo-based guitarist Dustin Wong creates blissful symphonies of chirps and cascading arpeggios, shot through with searing leads and throbbing bass pulses. At times they recall the exuberant psychedelia of Animal Collective or the heady experiments...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / FUJI ROCK 2013
Jul 31, 2013
Savages
Is there anyone you're hoping to catch at the festival?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / FUJI ROCK 2013
Jul 31, 2013
Yo La Tengo
They had you playing just after noon today. Do you find it's hard to be switched on so early in the morning?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 17, 2013
Silence is a virtue for Tokyo's Flau
Back when he still worked as a speech therapist and audiologist, Yasuhiko Fukuzono used to observe an interesting phenomenon. When deaf patients were fitted out with hearing aids for the first time, they complained that everything was just noise. "Even when they were at home, not doing anything, it was...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 20, 2013
Producer Yosi Horikawa goes all natural on 'Vapor'
Yosi Horikawa's beats burble, hiss, slosh and gurgle. On his debut full-length, "Vapor," the 34-year-old producer may wield some identifiably hip-hop rhythms, but they're tangled in a rich, intricately detailed tapestry of field recordings, sampled percussion, snatches of tribal chants and warm, guileless...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 4, 2013
Sonar festival sounds out Japanese hopefuls
For two decades, it's entertained, educated and — on more than a few occasions — polarized electronic music fans. As Barcelona's Sonar festival enters its 20th year, it's still as contrary as when it first started: an event with equal space in its heart for abstract electronica and the Pet Shop Boys,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 25, 2011
Artist-curated festival sets new rules
"It's Auschwitz with good music," jokes Nick Cave at the start of "All Tomorrow's Parties," a 2009 documentary released to mark the 10th anniversary of the music festival of the same name. It's a tasteless description for an impeccably tasteful event, one that has become a bastion for left-of-center...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 14, 2011
More than words: Triune Gods' rap speaks volumes
Five years ago, Masayuki Yoshimoto found himself rapping at a gig in a Vancouver basement. Few of the crowd had ever heard of MC Sibitt, as he likes to be known, and even fewer could understand anything he was saying, but they seemed to appreciate it all the same. Afterward, one question kept coming...
CULTURE / Music
Dec 17, 2010
Kara "Girl's Talk" ; 4Minute "Diamond"
There's been a lot of hand-wringing this year about South Korea threatening to overtake Japan in everything from international diplomacy to technology. In pop music, though, it's already happened. The chart-topping success of now-defunct boy band TVXQ (known as Tohoshinki in Japan) was just a prelude...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 10, 2010
Owen Pallett
At the tail end of last year, Canadian musician Owen Pallett issued a brief statement that he would be "voluntarily retiring" his stage name. For the previous five years, the songwriter and violin virtuoso had been producing ornate orchestral pop under the moniker Final Fantasy, a reference to the Japanese...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 24, 2010
Hard-knock life leads to magic music
In 2004, Renaud Barret and Florent de la Tullaye ditched their respectable jobs in France and headed to Kinshasa. In the ruined capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country just emerging from one of postcolonial Africa's worst conflicts, they felt strangely at home. "We were like mad dogs in...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 6, 2010
Hippies and hipsters brave a soggy Fuji Rock
When you're talking about a music festival whose inaugural event was literally wiped out by a typhoon, it can feel a bit petty to complain about the weather. All the same, campers arriving at Fuji Rock Festival in Naeba on Thursday last week might have hoped for a warmer welcome than the torrential downpour...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 6, 2010
Thoughts on Fuji — Dirty Projectors, Ozomatli, !!! and Yeasayer
Dave Longstreth, Dirty Projectors You mentioned during your show that it felt pretty early to be rocking out . . .
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / A SCORCHING SUMMER SCHEDULE
Jul 2, 2010
Fuji Rock Festival: Atoms For Peace
It sounded like a practical joke at first: Radiohead's Thom Yorke starting a band with frat-funk bassist Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers? But after a string of successful dates in the United States, including California's Coachella Festival, it's clear that Atoms for Peace mean business — and know...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 25, 2010
Asian Kung-Fu Generation "Magic Disk"
When The Japan Times asked a bunch of musicians last December to name the most influential Japanese artist from the past decade, Asian Kung-Fu Generation's Masafumi Goto went for Shutoku Mukai. It was a telling, if not particularly surprising, choice. Goto and Co. were quick to pick up the baton from...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 12, 2010
DJ Yogurt & Koyas: "Chill Out"
British dance duo The KLF birthed a monster with their 1990 album "Chill Out." A 44-minute ambient collage that mixed snatches of the group's own material with field recordings and samples of Elvis, throat singers and Fleetwood Mac, it would become the de facto comedown soundtrack for a generation of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 5, 2010
Shibusashirazu Orchestra set to sprawl
Things got off to a memorable start at England's Glastonbury Festival in 2002. Revelers were roused from their tents on the first morning to find the main Pyramid Stage overrun by a 40-strong Japanese big band, complete with costumed performance artists, butoh and go-go dancers. The late radio DJ John...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 29, 2010
Tomori "Utagoe no Minato"
Would it be premature to hail this as the best early-Showa period album of 2010? Osaka duo Tomari's debut album pays little heed to the stylistic advances of the past half-century, turning instead to the music of prewar Japan for inspiration. It's a sound that the band describes as kakuu no kayou (literally,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 13, 2009
Warp Records hits the big 2-0
Sheffield has come on a long way over the past 20 years. England's one-time "City of Steel" was, in the dying days of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's era, a pretty grim place to be, its factories shuttered and its high streets desolate. Today, it presents a cleaner, more affluent — and, some might...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 31, 2009
Running around the many stages
If you want to get a sense of the sprawling possibilities at Fuji Rock, just look at Rafven's schedule. The former street band from Gothenburg, Sweden, managed to play no less than nine times during the festival, bringing their exuberant brand of gypsy-style revelry to a string of different stages both...
Ishiba delays meeting with Trump, citing legal restrictions
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba waves upon arrival for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, in Callao, Peru, on Friday.
Two of America’s biggest debt holders are dumping Treasurys
The U.S. Treasury building in Washington. Investors in Japan and China sold a pile of U.S. debt in the last quarter, just before the U.S. presidential election.
Rising sex tourism exposes loopholes in Japan's anti-prostitution law
While financial misfortunes during the COVID-19 pandemic may have driven some women to work the streets, others simply want more money to spend — or want to pay off their debts — at host clubs.
Japan ranks last in romance satisfaction for second straight year
In a survey of 31 countries, Japan ranked last in terms of those who felt loved, with just 51% of respondents saying so.
Ruling coalition and DPP strike last-minute deal over economic policy
DPP policy chief Makoto Mahaguchi speaks at the party's policy gathering in Tokyo on Wednesday.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.
Japanese expats in Asia find community through rugby
The Taiwan Fivewoods celebrate their victory at the 2023 Asian Japanese Rugby Cup in December of last year.
In Fukushima, a weekend of prose, poetry and translation
Aomori-based writer JJ Carter presented on tabletop gaming as creative inspiration for building characters and narratives.
For Dr. Nakamats, aging is just experience in action
Though he didn't win the recent gubernatorial election in Tokyo, the 96-year-old Dr. Nakamats' run was seen as inspirational in Japan's aging society.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?
By Kathryn Wortley

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